


too much smoke

by magnificentmoose



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9602051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentmoose/pseuds/magnificentmoose
Summary: Percival Graves tried to maintain some sort of semblance of himself after having been held prisoner by a mysterious captor in a magical suitcase for three months. In record time, he learns that it was Grindelwald, and is put on trial for conspiring with the terror of Europe.In court, he appears calm and dignified, but make no mistake: the Director of Magical Security is a broken man.





	1. Chapter 1

Tina was the one who found him. In an enchanted, cramped suitcase of all places. When she had happened upon him, naked, half-dazed and wandering in the dark, he thought it was his mysterious captor come once again, to give the foul liquid that kept him cold and trembling while he took his identity. He had no idea how long he had been stuck there, the place fetid and covered in waste – his captor had not been kind enough to provide him with anything to relieve himself and, so he was left, brain addled to stew in a mess of his own filth and jumbled thoughts.

The man who was keeping him locked up here always kept his face hidden, and when he spoke, it was in the mocking tones of his own voice. His voice that wasn’t his own was performing the Cruciatus Curse on him, slowly but surely turning him into a tired mess of a body. His shirt sleeves were filthy and in tatters and there were the pricklings of a beard beginning to grow on his lean cheeks.

He swore in the moments when the potion gave him brief lapses of clarity that he would cause great harm to the wizard who had done this to him. It was as if a low buzzing had canceled out all of his sense she could not figure out the time and wondered how long it would possibly take for someone to find him. Surely, whoever was using him for Polyjuice Potion was such a bad actor and his colleagues would notice the difference. Yet as time wore on, and even in his cloudy state he could tell it was somehow progressing, a gradual sinking feeling developed in his chest and worked its way into the swollen pit of his stomach. Nobody was coming and he had failed them all. 

When he was rolled out, he crawled and collapsed onto the floor. There was a ringing in his ears and bright spots across his vision. He could make out a man with reddish hair and freckles looked at him rather discontentedly, a mixture of shock and concern on his face. (It was later that Newt would tell him that the image of Grindelwald still lay heavy on his conscious and it was a shock to see the real Percival Graves.) What looked to be a green, moving stick was moving in and out of his peripheral vision. He moved his fingers to try and snatch at it, but it scurried away towards the man. 

“Mr. Graves, we’re here now,” came the wobbling voice of Tina Goldstein. “Please don’t try to move too much, there are a few lacerated wounds that could reopen if you jerk too suddenly.

He looked up. There were four people standing over him: Tina, the red-head, a woman who looked frighteningly like Seraphina Picquery, and another man whose face he couldn’t quite make out. They were peering at him owlishly, as if trying to decide what do with him.

“Mr. Graves, you’ve been forcibly held against your will in a magically enchanted suitcase by the dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald,” said the woman, who looked and sounded like Picquery. “During that time, he assumed your identity until he broke character a few weeks ago, wreaking havoc on New York and almost breaking the International Statute of Secrecy.”

Why were they telling him this, shouldn’t they be moving him somewhere? He tried to croak out a few words, testing his voice that he been scarred by yelling and then had gone scratchy from lack of use. His brain tried to grapple at one question, but switched to another.

“What day is it?” he managed to get out.

“It’s January the third,” offered the red haired man, whose face was beginning to swim into view and seemed uncannily familiar. He seemed remarkably out of place among this high fleet of aurors. The accent was out of place, too.  
.  
The realizations hit him at once: his mysterious captor was Gellert Grindelwald and he had been gone three months.

Three months; it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“The other thing is,” said the auror he couldn’t identify. “Mr. Percival Graves, you are under arrest for conspiring with Gellert Grindelwald for endangering the international wizarding community.”

He decided right then and there that he would not faint and would try to retain one last shred of dignity. His body and mind had other plans and once more they gave up the ghost and he collapsed, unconscious, to the floor.

*

He awoke, joints stiff in a hospital bed, the red-haired man was bobbling anxiously over his body. From the corner of his eye, it looked like he was stepping in and out of a suitcase, but Graves could not tell if it was a hallucination or not. He wondered how the man had acquired his, as they were often very difficult to enchant. They were mostly used by smugglers in the illegal transportation of magical beasts, and Graves made a note to have whoever this man was, bag looked into.

Once again, the unruly mop of red poked out of the case and clambered on up. “Oh good, you’re awake.” The accent was out of place: British. Had MACUSA begun hiring consultants since he was gone? He had a sort of foppish quality about him, his shirt sleeves rolled up that Graves can make out a few faded, white lines. Definitely a smuggler. He would have to have Tina look into that. 

“And you are?”

The man made a funny expression, but no eye contact. “Newt Scamander; magizoologist. I believe that Gellert Grindelwald was using Brimhorn venom to keep you in a semi-catatonic state. We were able to purge most of it out of your system, but I’m afraid there may be a few malingering effects for the next few days.” He rushed through his words, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he would rather be anywhere else. 

The uncanniness drifted away and the pieces slotted into place. So, this was Theseus’ younger brother. They had been corresponding for many years now over strictly government related issues, but Theseus let slip the occasional sentiment. He had once consulted him once about a case where a ring had illegally smuggled Hippogriffs into the Appalachian Mountains. Theseus had duly written back, mentioning his brother’s work with magical creatures; it had seemed almost careless that he would bring family into an official, confidential letter – Theseus Scamander, war hero of Ypres; a mawkish, family man. It was a pride of sorts, not something he had expected: better than him.

“Newt Scamander,” he repeated. “And why are you playing nanny with a human who has just been convicted of conspiring with a known terrorist? Surely you have better things to do,” he said acidly. If Picquery isn’t here to hear him protest the outrageous accusation, then this twig of a man would have to do. 

Newt didn’t look too affronted. “Yes, I’m afraid that at the moment I could be feeding quite a lot of creatures who have had their lives threatened far too much in the last few days. I’m here as a favor to Tina, and because I’m also the only one who is actually acutely aware of the effects of Brimhorn venom” A thin green stick clinging to a lapel on his vest, that could only be a bowtruckle, blew a raspberry at him. Ah, so this was the famous Scamander temperament in person.

The man gave a little start. “Pickett,” he admonished the bowtruckle, “that was very rude.” His face softened. “I apologize,” he stammered, smoothing out the wrinkles in his trousers. “That was careless of me, but I’m afraid the last time I heard your… his voice, it was hurling unforgivable curses at me.” His face crumpled a little and he looked genuinely apologetic. It was an act then.

“My brother told me a great many things about you,” he began to say and then broke off. 

Percival doesn’t quite know how to respond to that and he didn’t want to engage in any more conversation with the man. He turned on his side to let him know that he didn’t want to speak any longer. Another one, he supposed, who didn’t recognize that it wasn’t him. Newt continued to putter around for a little while longer, until eventually retreating into the suitcase where he presumably kept a public disaster waiting to happen. 

So it had been Grindelwald, who had assumed his identity for the past three months – whenever he thought of the name, a hollow weight filled his chest and it felt like his whole body would collapse. Gellert Grindelwald, the man who had terrified half of Europe, tearing it apart with fearsome rhetoric. Oh, and that symbol of his that he had come so close to understand with: the bisected triangle containing the circle. He could only guess what it meant, but most elegant symbols or chants have their staying power, so too had they enraptured him. Certainly, he had seen the pamphlets and had taken one from Evidence just to study it and try to understand how so many men and women, (a frightening number of them school age), had been drawn to his allegiance. 

He had read it over in his apartment and had pushed it away as the ravings of a madman. Yet the words seemed to close in deep, and in some deep part of him, began to make a home. Why should we hide in secret, keeping our every movement away from the No-Majs? It was as if someone had turned on the light; the fractured logic that had so confounded him was beginning to make sense. He found himself returning again and again to the pamphlet, and then going into Evidence and seeking out more pieces of propaganda, ostensibly to try to understand the case better.

Grindelwald was right. Why should they have to hide in fear for so long? It was unjust, and a part of him had felt so inflamed him that he felt that everything that he had done so far. In a fit of fury, he scribbled the symbol on the pages of the journal, as if it was his sole purpose to serve it and do its’ bidding. And then the bile rose in his throat up like a recalcitrant child. He tried to erase the memory in his head and he felt sick. How easily he had let his profound moral code, the one he prided himself most on, if anything at all, had slipped. No one must know, and he tore the sheet and crumpled it.

It was in this state of confusion and harrowing mix of guilt on his way to begin his investigation into the Barebone child, that his usual alertness had slipped and he had not noticed a singular, malevolent presence. A blow to the head, the whisper of some sort of enchantment and then he had known only black. When had come to, he had found his arms and legs tied.


	2. Chapter 2

They hadn’t let him return to his apartment until they had finished engaging in the hunt for evidence, and was forced to stay in the fourth floor quarters of the Woolworth Building that MACUSA typically used for short-term stays by visiting ambassadors. At least it wasn’t the ward. Of course, he was still under arrest, but they weren’t going to put MACUSA’s top ranking official in a cell. He wondered if Grindelwald was enjoying as fine of the view as he was getting, hundreds of feet below. 

The temporary Director of Magical Security, a tall, thin women named Margaret Stockman, had told him that he would be placed here until the final pieces of evidence had been collected. The room was small and cramped, but the bed was comfortable; he couldn’t imagine it made a good impression on the diplomats. There were clothes hanging in the closet, but the moment he slipped them on, he noticed that they were too big for him, shirt sleeves dangling lazily over his too thin arms.

If he had his wand, he might have been able to make some adjustments, but it was locked away in Evidence where a team of aurors were having a crack at it to see which spells that Grindelwald had used. He could have tried the wandless magic that had distinguished him as a young student at Ilvermorny, one of the Graves family traits, but he couldn’t quite get his mind around the right words. 

He was unable to sleep at night, the covers itching into his skin, woken by the hammering of his heart in his knees and shins and all the wrong places. He kept flitting back to the hours before he’d been captured: he had promised he would look into the case of the Second Salemer boy and he had been so preoccupied with that he hadn’t considered anything else. Stupid. He replayed different scenarios over and over in his mind, trying to poke holes in the events to see where he could pop through and rearrange the pieces a little differently. Maybe if he had studied divination more carefully at school, he might have foreseen the whole damned catastrophe. 

One thing remained clear: it was his fault that the wizarding community of America had almost been exposed and a boy had been killed. 

Newt came to check on him every evening, checking the effects of the Brimhorn venom. Yet oftentimes, he would overstay as if he was supposed to be there, but didn’t know quite how to talk to him. He had a sinking suspicion that he was there as a sort of suicide watch, to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. He would try to make idle chat about the weather, (gloomy), Theseus (“He’s very busy with the Ministry,”) or Graves himself. At least Newt had begun to make eye contact with him, but his eyes still kept flitting about the room.

One time, both Queenie and Tina Goldstein appeared at the same time, a wooden box under one of her arms. Queenie was younger, and it would be a mistake to label her as ditzy but she was truly a gifted legilimens. If he wasn’t occluded, he would be straight up terrified of her. It was odd to see them together, one blue and black and the other pink and gold. She smiled sweetly at the pair of them, and then cast a levitation spell and the box floated out of her hands and began to disassemble itself until Graves saw a very fancy chess set, with hand-carved figures onto a card table. 

“It was our parents’,” said Tina. “We thought you might use it to pass the time?”

Graves looked from Tina to Queenie to Newt, who were all gazing at him as if he said “no,” he would have greatly disappointed them. He felt almost as if he was taking care of them more than they were of him. 

“Shall we have a round, then?” he asked Newt. The truth of the matter was he desperately needed the distraction, something to stop the thoughts that keep careening through his mind and popping up in inopportune moments. 

Tina looked visibly relieved, “I told you not to worry,” whispered Queenie. 

Newt pulled his chair forward and examined up the pieces with his long fingers. “I haven’t played in years.”

“Then we’re evenly matched.”

“I’ll moderate, if you’d like,” trilled Queenie and she moved to sit down on the yellow couch in the corner. 

“I’m sure it would be a fair game if you could tell me my opponent’s moves, Miss Goldstein.”

She laughed and her voice was like the foam of a tall tankard of butterbeer; clear, bright and bubbly, but not too inanely sweet to mask the more complex notes lurking just beneath the head. 

“Would you like to play white or red, Mr. Graves?” asked Newt who had stopped fiddling and was now staring very intently at him. 

“Red,” and the game began.

Out of five games, they both won twice and they came to a standstill in the final round. No point in chasing their pieces across the board for another six hours and into infinity. He supposed their plan to take him out of his mind for a few hours had worked, but when Newt and Queenie had left, the tell-tale frantic heartbeat returned and he was back with the guilt of it all. He worried that this heavy weighted feeling that seemed to slip so comfortably under his skin would always be with him.

*

The trial was absurdly long, as he was examined and cross-examined and forced to hear testimony. Some had even debated giving him veritaserum, but Picquery spoke in his defense. Graves’ body was certainly not ready to ingest the potion, and nor was it necessary, she had said. Ever poised and dignified, she argued that his testimony was perfectly clear. How could it be that the director of magical security, who had faithfully served this government for nigh on twenty years with such unflinching competence could not possibly have conspired with Grindelwald. The journal entries that they had found in his room had been faked and did not match up with his handwriting.

In the court room, he tried to play-act as his old self; good posture, firm expression. Still, he feels like an imposter in the ill-fitting suit and the coat they provided him, was serviceable if somewhat drab. He wondered if they would ever give him his old one back. There was a constant fog that seemed to surround his head at all times, that he found great difficulty whenever he wanted to speak. Newt, who didn’t seem to want to bolt every time he looked at him now, had called it a sort of “magical migraine,” merely a side effect of the potion. It would disappear in a few days. 

Why had he been so cocky? Of course, he had never seen it coming; he had been too keen on his own vanity as Director of Magical Security. Too showy, too commanding - was it really possible that Grindelwald had pretended to be him for six months? According to testimonies from the junior aurors, they had not noticed a difference in tone or manner. They hadn’t even had the decency to say it to his face, choosing instead to report it to the daily rags. (The Ghost was having a field day with some increasingly creative headlines.)

Even Seraphina, never one to show her emotions in public, a calm and resolute figure was cracking. He had made eye contact with her, coming out of the trial and for a moment he could see a break in the pattern; a dart of the eyes to the left. What was it then; pity, reproach, concern? The president quickly covered her mistake, but still it bothered him.

During breaks, he would sit by himself in the hall, not looking at anything in particular. His eyes would trace and retrace the lines of the tiles, looking for cracks in the squares and then starting over. It was comforting to look at the same pattern repeated over and over again, allowing his mind to focus on that particular act. He could see other wizards passing by, but they skirted around him; whispering, but not daring to look him in the eyes. Here was the director of Magical Security, the hound of Seraphina Picquery, making ridiculous patterns in the hallways of MACUSA. The sound of another set of footsteps in the distance, a well-heeled shoe was coming towards him and he looked up. 

“Are you alright, Mr. Graves, sir?” That was Tina, prim and nervous in blue. The bow on her blouse was tied perfectly, but he could see her fiddling with the ends, constantly retying them. In the round of aurora applicants, he had singled her out as being the most capable of her peers, if not without a certain tendency to rush headlong into situations. The daughter of Polish Jews who had died when she only eight, she had taken turns raising her younger sister to rising to the top of her class at Ilvermorny. In ten years, she might be at the top of the list to replace him.

“I’m fine, Goldstein.” Her eyebrows bunched up and she fidgeted uncomfortably. In her hands she held a thermos and two lumpy, brown parcels.

“I’ve got some cold coffee and a couple of sandwiches,” and she offered them to him. He waited for a moment too long. “That is, if you’re hungry of course. Newt said that Brimhorn venom had odd effects on the appetite.” Even after a stranger had worn his face, dismissed her from her post, physically attacked her, she still stood there as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Thank you, Tina” he spoke, his voice cracking around the vowels; still a little rusty. He took the proffered items and her lips quirked and curved into a small smile.

“For the record, sir, I don’t believe you had any part in it. I’ll be down the hall,” and she turned on her heel and walked away as quietly as she had come.

He unwrapped the sandwiches and drank the cold, too sweet coffee. Newt Scamander checked on him a few hours later and assured him that he was rapidly trying to develop an antidote. He told him that he should be able to eat most foods. A few hours later, Graves left the partially digested remains of Tina’s kindness in the second floor men’s bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

They closed the case the following Monday, the court proclaiming him innocent. The trial of the man himself was set to follow within a few weeks. He was given his wand back, but there wasn’t the familiar warmth when he held it in his hands; it felt cold and lifeless. He thanked Abernathy at the wand registry, who had nodded somberly at him.

“It’s good to have you back, sir. I mean, you weren’t really ever gone, and you’ll be on leave for some time, I imagine. And I’m sure they’ll want you testify against Grindel…” He trailed off into silence. “Have a nice day, sir.”

“Thank you, Abernathy.”

He had pulled some strings and was able to talk to the men and women over at Evidence about giving him his coat back. He hadn’t tried to be too menacing, but Tina had told him later that she had gone down later and the department looked as if they had the stuffing out of them.

Seraphina’s office, highest floor of Woolworth. Spacious, but also tightly coiled and with the sense that it could become a trap for anyone who dared step foot in. A few framed photographs stood on the desk and large, billowy curtains framed the windows that looked out onto the city skyline. He had always admired the view with a perfunctory nod when he came to deliver a report, but he was seeing it as if for the first time. She was looking out across the skyscrapers, watching the lazy clouds roll in across the darkening sky.

“Percival,” came the smooth tones of a voice that had commanded her Quidditch team as a young witch, and had rang out high and clear among her 1919 campaign. “What can I do for you?”

He tried to keep his tone even. “A ‘temporary leave’ for six months? You really can’t be serious. Stockman is incompetent!”

“Percival, we would extend this to any employee of MACUSA. I might have been able to disclose the evidence against you, but it would be better for you to lay low for a little while.”

“We both know that’s absurd.” He tried to keep it like one of their quick banters, back at Ilvermorny or later, when she had stayed up late with him at the Investigative Department, sipping milky coffee. 

The Picquery and Graves families had been feuding with each other for centuries, and they had equally been advised to stay away from each other at Ilvermorny. Yet when he was placed in Horned Serpent, Seraphina three years his senior, they had circled each other until Graves had told her that she would have a far better chance at becoming a prefect by not bewitching Professor Babbage’s petunias. Somewhere, although it was never quite spoken aloud, grew a thin vein of friendship that would grow and expand over many years. From a mutually advantageous situation grew a gradual climbing in the political ranks in the years that followed. 

“Percival.” She narrowed her brows and any hint of fondness in her tone was beginning to slip away.

“I am no use to you crawling around my apartment for six months, trying not to break things in my hands because I can’t even hold a damned wand for longer than five seconds.”

“On the contrary, I think it would be the least humanitarian action to put my top aide in harm’s way after having had him endure a three-month torture that seems to have stripped you of most of your rationality.”

So this wasn’t going to be one of their usual discussions. 

“So this is your way of saying, ‘Oh I’m so sorry that you were captured and that your lack of insight lead to the almost exposure of the international wizarding community.’ Take some vacation time, I’m sure that more isolation will make you feel much better.”

“No, that would be when I saved your ass from a sentence in court for conspiring with Grindelwald. He didn’t fake your handwriting.”

“Seraphina.”

“You are dismissed, Mr. Graves. And if I see you within ten miles of Woolworth in the next six months, I will personally send Goldstein to keep a twenty-four-hour guard on you to ensure that you gain some peace and rest before returning.”

He left the office.

*

He deemed himself fit enough to walk out from Woolworth, a letter in the coat that was too big for him giving him a required month’s leave of absence. He said goodbye to Newt Scamander, who had promised to check in on him a few more times before he left for England.  
In the left pocket of the coat that was too big for him were two letters: one contained the contents of an executive order from Seraphina demanding that he take a mandatory leave of one month in order to recover his health. The second was a fat envelope, covered in the meticulous cursive of one Theseus Scamander. Even the war had knocked the curlicues out of his letters. 

Newt handed it to him with a small smile. “Came by carrier pigeon this morning, although I really have no idea why you are so opposed to owl delivery.”

“I’m afraid you really don’t know too much about the American wizarding community, Mr. Scamander.” 

Newt smiled sheepishly, passing his case from one hand to the other. The bowtruckle on his shoulder looked offended. “Ah yes, Tina informed me.”

They shook hands, or rather, Graves extended his hand and Newt looked down at it in puzzlement before realizing what he was supposed to do. His hands were callused and worn, evidently from his work with magical creatures. A small thought popped up; at least he hadn’t been the one to round up the escaped beasts. Wonderful, he was already beginning to find the circumstances of his capture rather amusing. 

Newt waved goodbye, catching his gaze and heading off in the opposite direction. He was alone again for the first time since his torture and capture. With a deep breath, a gust of wind and he wished himself outside the door to his apartment.

With a rush and a spin, he landed almost too neatly on the hardwood floor. He kept his eyes closed for a little longer, wondering if when he opened them, he would be back inside the suitcase and all this had been some newly devised torture by his captor. The wind subsided, the smell of burnt wood in the air, and there he was. He was sure that Picquery had probably kept a few people posted to make sure that he wouldn’t splinch himself along the way. 

Tentatively, he opened the door and there was his apartment, all laid out as if a murderous terrorist hadn’t been living in it for the past three months. Graves checked the pantries to see what sort of dried goods were left; alas, only a can of soup, a japanned tin of loose leaf tea and an unopened box of pasta. Merlin’s beard, he was going to have to go shopping at some point. He scratched the back of his head and could feel the uneven patches where Grindelwald’s knife had ripped out chunks of his hair. 

He put the kettle on to boil and then scrambled to find a pair of match sticks. It had been some time since he was last forced to use No-Maj tools to cook his own food. Graves wasn’t quite ready to use magic just yet – using the wand that had caused so much destruction pained him. He wandered around the apartment to keep his mind from thinking too much. It seemed that all traces of its’ previous, false inhabitant were removed by the investigative team. The place didn’t feel like his anymore, but neither did it feel like how it was when he first bought it. Rather, it was like coming back to a place that you hadn’t visited since childhood, and everything seemed so much smaller and less important than you remembered. 

He caught his reflection in the mirror and for a moment he doesn’t recognize himself. He had tried not to focus too much on his appearance while being held at MACUSA, but here he let his eyes trace over his face and body. The shaved sides have started to grow back in and his frame was noticeably much thinner. A waft of a beard was growing on his cheeks and here he could begin to see the signs that he was getting older. They didn’t use Dementors for corporal punishment in America, but Graves had seen the photos of the victims; blank eyes, lopsided bodies – like the shell-shocked No-Maj men who inhabited the alleyways and back corners of the city. His whole body shuddered and he looked away.

There were no clothes in the closet, and nothing in the chest of drawers either. Yet something felt extremely odd about the whole room, as if there was something that was missing that had yet to come to light. Graves hated being left without all the pieces, urging ever forward to solve a new case, but here nothing seemed to settle right in his bones. With careful fingers, he took the wand from his pocket and hesitantly muttered, “Revelio.”

From the deepest corner of the room floated a small, black box. For a moment he was afraid to open it, thinking that it could contain a hex, but when he opened it, no beast or enchantment sprang out at him. Instead, he saw the twin, scorpion stick pins. For a moment, he simply gazed down at them, having thought them long gone. He hadn’t worn them the day he was captured, so Grindelwald must have left them here before his grand scheme erupted through New York. 

A memory, unbidden prodded its’ way into his mind. Eighteen, thinking himself king of the world for being the youngest auror in the history of MACUSA and deciding to go out and buy something frivolous. The scorpion was part of the Graves coat of arms, and at the time the emeralds hadn’t seemed flashy, merely a symbol of all that he had inherited and all that was to come. All that confidence had led him here.

A clawing feeling began to push his way up from the pit of his stomach, crawling too quickly towards his chest and rushing air of guilt began to flow over him and his heart began to speed up. He felt sick to see the carefully carved stinger and pincers, and the glowing, bright eyes. A piercing sound came from another room, and he almost dropped the box before he realized the water had finished boiling.

As if in a daze, he stumbled, half-heartedly back to the kitchen, trying to ground himself in the process of making tea. He set the box on the counter and tried to rationalize his situation. Grindelwald was locked up in the most secure of MACUSA’s cells, there was no possibility he had planted the box here. He measured the tea leaves into the pot, poured the water and covered the lid to let it steep for three and a half minutes. Why hadn’t MACUSA found it, then? He began pacing, clenching his fist to try to calm himself down. He tried to get himself to remember that here he could move as he pleased and control his own actions and thoughts and memories. The tea finished steeping and he poured it into a cup with uncharacteristically unsteady hands.

Out of the corner of his eye, and began to notice a little wisp of black smoke, darting and dodging itself in between the grates of the fireplace. He looked over and what could have caused the disturbance of the ash, but noticed nothing particularly striking. Coagulated strands of dark gossamer, but probably just the steam rising from the cup, caught in the light. 

Finding his way to the armchair, he molded his frame to the shallow impressions he had left before. His hands gripped the handle of the mug so tightly that his knuckles turned white and he was almost afraid that he would shatter it to pieces. Inordinately, he had chosen his mother’s favorite cup – oh she would laugh or maybe cry to see him like this, brought so low – unable to hold a quivering teacup in one hand. Outside his windows, a soft rain began to fall.

The smell began to waft upwards, a deep lemon scent that pervaded the whole room, rising to the ceiling in short bursts. He tried to focus on the way the steam curled up into the air and the transparency of the liquid in his cup. The thing that had been eating him up from the inside was coming to up inside him since he had first tumbled out of that prison was coming dangerously close to spilling over. In one wet sob, he muttered wingardium leviosa and the cup floated wobbly into the air. It was barely enough time before his face collapsed into his hands and his whole body shook with the impossibility of being alive and the utter, profound guilt he felt. For a moment, he almost wished for that haze as he had known in Grindelwald’s suitcase, if it was only to drown out the ever increasingly disordered fragments that kept repeating over and over in his head.

There was something inside him that had broken the moment he had stepped out, filled with secret shame, to look for the Barebone child.

Whether he was going to be alright in the long run was anybody’s guess. The steam from the tea rose high and lonely into the air and out towards the windows, bathed in the soft glow of the grey, rain lit sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first foray into writing fic after two years or so, and it's always a fun challenge. I told myself that I was not going to write this and that I should finish another piece of original work. Lo and behold, I stayed up until 4 AM drafting a story about Percival Graves trying to deal with trauma. I didn't think he would be able to assume his same, "air of coiled, intense confidence," as Rowling put it.
> 
> I'd like to write more for this fandom at some point, (I absolutely adore Tina Goldstein as a character,) and it would a fun project to work on in the future. As for now, it appears that this will just be just the one. Any comments or thoughts are very much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for reading x


End file.
